Getting Wired

The Guide to Wire Guidance

What is Wire Guidance?
 Wire guidance is a system that steers and controls VNA (Very Narrow Aisle) trucks down, well, very narrow aisles. Order pickers and Swing reaches are typically trucks that are used in a wire guidance set up. Essentially they put a wire in the ground and it syncs with the fork lift to keep it going in a straight line down the aisle.

This is a swing reach truck. It is an amazing multi-functional chunk of material handling love. Now, think about trying to steer it down a narrow aisle and work at the same time. Do you want to try it? Me neither.

Why Wire Guidance?
This idea never made sense to me until I was learning how to drive a fork lift and realized how hard it can be to steer one. Without wire guidance, the risk of getting hurt, damaging products, damaging racks, damaging lifts becomes much greater. Also, wire guidance makes a workers day much more effiecent. They can spend less time messing with the steering and more time movings products. This is a great time to say "Time is Money."

What are other options?
Rail guidance is another option that keeps truck in-line so that they don't hit the racks. They are similar to the bumbers in bowling that we used as kids.

Why would someone NOT get wire guidance?
First of all, it isn't required. And second, it costs money.

So why should I spend the money if I don't have to have it?
So usually when I see a warehouse without wire guidance, I can tell someone hasn't explained the benefit to the right decision maker. The wire guidance cost money. However, if my paycheck was directly affected by the safety and efficiency of my warehouse, I would rally to pay the up front cost. Fork lifts are expensive to fix. Workman's comp and insurance claims are never a joy to deal with. Damaged products set back the flow of the warehouse. And having to quickly steer a huge piece of machinery down a very narrow aisle while picking and putting away products without a guide, just doesn't seem like the best way to do things.


I did a project in Anaheim last week where we put wire guidance into a new facility. The racks were already up, but all the pallets were on the floor when we came to put the wire guidance in. I asked him why the products weren't in the racks and he replied, "It is going to take three times as long to put those up without wire guidance. Plus, I don't want anyone or anything getting hurt in the process. We will lose less money putting the warehouse on hold than we would if something bad happened." This guy knew what he was talking about.

Here is the line of chalk that the guys lay out so they can cut a straight line.

This is the machine that cuts the slab where the wire is going to go. Pretty neat!